


The World Around Me, The World Above Me: Reminiscence of a Shorter-Than-Average Asura

by Kazukoh (NihileNOPE)



Series: #TyriasLibraryEvent [2]
Category: Guild Wars 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Home, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-13 10:42:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20172922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NihileNOPE/pseuds/Kazukoh
Summary: Written for #tyriaslibraryevent. Anecdote spanning over many years.





	The World Around Me, The World Above Me: Reminiscence of a Shorter-Than-Average Asura

I vividly remember sitting atop my Dad’s shoulders as we walked the road to Desider Atum. Even though waypoints were already scattered across Metrica Province, Mom, Dad, and Grandma Miimii would always join up together, and take a trek on foot from our homes in Rata Sum and its West Outskirts, through Soren Draa, and all the way up through Voloxian Passage to Desider Atum. I watched it grow from a small traveler’s outpost to a full blown shopping center, where merchants of all kinds could set out their wares, even though there were mainstays. The small chef’s station expanded to a restaurant, to a full blown food court, the armories and weapon shops to a strip mall, and further up. Even though my parents’ relationship contract ended, the trip was still made-it was just made twice. Once with Mom and Grandma Miimii, and once with Dad. I went from riding on their shoulders to sitting nestled in the hand of a Golem, as my medical condition left me with less energy before. But at least I could try all the food that was offered there, instead of just a few things a day.

While the trips were fun, it was also always nice to come back home, back to the lab in the outskirts of Rata Sum, or to Grandma Miimii’s apartment near the Peacemaker Headquarters, or to Dad’s lab in The Hinterlabs, depending on who all went on said trip. Even though the hotel bedrooms were comfortable, nothing beat my own bed, which I fit in perfectly, as opposed to the sea of sheets that was a normal Asura-sized bed.

Sometimes we’d even just find a place to stay within the structure of Rata Sum itself-with how massive it is, there were many places to go and things to do, to the point that many Asura didn’t even bother leaving to go elsewhere.

I never left Metrica or Rata Sum as a child.

The trips stopped when I went away to college-Dynamics, specifically-but it was when I graduated that I really expanded my horizons. I hopped on an airship to Elona, only to return outside of small visits after an incident at work. I later ended up traveling to Divinity’s Reach, exploring the surrounding areas. One point I was even in The Black Citadel, after being caught up in a scandal (I was innocent, just in the wrong place at the wrong time). Sometimes I’d walk to The Grove, too. But most of the time, I’d just wander routes between these places, taking care to avoid Inquest and Nightmare Courtiers-my greatest fears.

I traveled on foot, on various mounts-including my Golem, Scuffles, via waypoints and Asura gates, and even atop airships and hot air balloons. A few times I’ve even ridden on Charr or Norn shoulders, or in other people’s backpacks.

Everything was large to me. Even some things in Asura territory were out of my reach.

Home changed, too. I went from paying a refugee to share a tent to a room in Zalambur’s casino, to a tent on hunting lodge grounds, back to my mom’s home, to my Krewe’s lab, to the streets of Rata Sum, to another tent on Elonian grounds, to a hole in the wall structure in a field base, all the way back to a hospital bed in a hospital sanctioned apartment. Outside of the streets of Rata Sum, they were all home.

And home is the easiest place to find me.

**Author's Note:**

> I always pictured Rata Sum and other “Rata” Asura locations to be like Roppongi Hills in Japan-structures where you can work, live, and play without commuting, and places like Desider Atum to be like your standard shopping center, or an open-air mall (Not really a strip mall in full, since those are just one long street as opposed to the layers and turns of a regular mall)


End file.
